Brian Hippensteel, 50, of Mount Holly Springs, is escorted from his preliminary hearing in September. His trial started Monday in Cumberland County Court on charges that include attempted murder.
(File photo.)

According to the prosecution, Timothy Bouder is only alive today because he dodged a bullet.

“Two of them, actually,” Cumberland County Assistant District Attorney Richard Bradbury told the jury. “He happily escaped with only minor injuries. I think the term for that is ‘miraculous.’”

But Chief Public Defender Timothy Clawges pointed out while there may not be much dispute about many of the facts in the case, the answer to the question of the intent of his client, Brian Hippensteel, is not so cut and dry.

Trial began Monday in Cumberland County Court for Hippensteel, 50, of Mount Holly Springs.

Bradbury said in his opening statements to the jury Monday that at the beginning of September, Hippensteel’s estranged wife and Bouder met at a bar, got along well, and went out a few times.

That’s when the problems began, Bradbury said. On Sept. 16, he said Hippensteel stepped out of the dark, and threated Bouder, and told him, “he’s a dead man.”

And several days later on Sept. 21, in broad daylight in downtown Carlisle, Bradbury said Hippensteel attacked Bouder when he stopped off to pick up Hippensteel’s estranged wife.

According to Bradbury’s opening statement, Hippensteel exchanged words with Bouder first, then went to his car, where he retrieved a .30-06 hunting rifle, and fired two rounds into the vehicle at Bouder.

Though he received minor injuries, Bouder was bleeding badly, he said, and emergency medical personnel believed he was going to die.

Hippensteel fled, and was found later that day on a remote road in Cooke Township, according to the prosecution.

When police found him, “the first question out of his lips was, ‘Is he dead?’” Bradbury told the jury, which he said indicates Hippensteel had set out to kill Bouder.

“That was his goal,” Bradbury said. “He failed not because of what he did, but because Tim Bouder dodged a bullet.”

During Clawges’ opening statements, he told the jury they have a difficult task ahead of them of taking in all of the information that will be presented, and while there’s not much dispute in many of the facts, he said some of the charges against Hippensteel are dependent on what his client intended to do that day.

“You have to decide what the intent was, and what intent he had at that time,” Clawges said. “That’s what will be extremely difficult, and will make your job hard.”

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